


Ouroboros

by everythingFangirl



Category: Lunch Club, Video Blogging RPF, Wayward Children Series - Seanan McGuire
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universes, Friendship, Gen, Portal Fantasy, wayward worlds au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-15
Updated: 2020-06-15
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:28:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24740047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/everythingFangirl/pseuds/everythingFangirl
Summary: There is a feeling of trust among the five of them, of respect, the kind that you can only find among people that understand each other better than anyone else on Earth ever could.Because they know what it is to step through a Door and not recognize the world on the other side.The epilogue of five different stories, and the prologue to a sixth.
Relationships: No Romantic Relationship(s)
Comments: 19
Kudos: 51
Collections: Josh Allen's Home for Wayward Children





	Ouroboros

**Author's Note:**

> This is an AU based on the Wayward Children/Every Heart a Doorway book series by Seanan McGuire, but you don't need to know the original books in order to read this story. We developed this concept together with the people from the Victors' Tower Discord (love you guys!).

Let’s set the scene. 

See the elegant manor in the middle of the sprawling countryside, surrounded by fields which are surrounded by forest. The gardens around the house are jewel-bright, the trees verdant and alive. The house is old, but it, too, is alive, and it is bright. Its owner has made sure it is so. 

Move closer, across the driveway that snakes across the field and back to the roads behind, through the gate with its elegant sign, go through the door. Up the stairs, now. 

There is a room. Five occupy it. It feels like there should be more, and whether that’s because of the noise and the laughter and the feeling of joy, or the strange sense of absence, of something missing, isn’t clear. 

Look at the two boys on the armchairs, first. Absorbed in a game on the television screen, controllers in their hands, occasional sounds of laughter or mockery spilling into the cacophony of the room. They are not from the same world, have not had the same past, but since they arrived here scarcely anyone has thought of one without the other. 

The first, with his blonde hair dripping water onto the furniture, because to have it not be would feel far too dry, like the air that still sometimes feels like it’s choking him, that the ground that stubbornly refuses to yield and let him flow upwards, forwards, away towards the surface and to freedom. 

~~Imagine the scales on his cheeks, the gills on his neck, that hair flowing freely as he rockets forward through the ocean, with nothing to stop him except the pull of the Tide.~~

The second, hair night-black next to the other’s gold, hood stubbornly pulled over his head, the fur inside tickling his cheeks and his arms, all too aware that it doesn’t feel real, not like the soft hairs of the beasts he used to prowl along, like the hot and humid air that caressed his skin.

~~Imagine him moving through those dense jungles, imagine that bright smile turning fanged, those fingers becoming clawed and deadly, except they could never quite be deadly, because the Soil won’t reclaim anything it has offered to its world.~~

Turn to the couch, now. Two sit upon it, the source of most of the chaos in the room. 

The first, brown-haired and fast and lively and bright neon, spewing nonsense and Nonsense which he knows the others will only partly understand, but that doesn’t matter because it’s all true, sound flooding in through his headphones and although the volume is turned up all the way it will never quite be enough.

~~Imagine that sound, that color, that movement, and amplify it ten times, a hundred times, a thousand times, imagine the boy moving through that blur as if it’s nothing because he understands, because it’s home, because the Sky has said that he belongs.~~

The second, loud and booming and undeniably present, hair stark black and shirt stark white and the band-aids on his arms the whole spectrum of color between, filling in any gaps in the noise of the room because he can’t bear the sound of silence, can’t bear the color of bone no matter how comforting it is to him. 

~~Imagine that booming voice silenced, falling on deaf ears, in a world of bleached white skulls and clattering ribs and the life he so covets coming to an end that he cannot stop, the feeling of powerlessness as the hands of the Clock rewind once again.~~

There is a feeling of trust, of respect, the kind that you can only find among people that understand each other better than anyone else on Earth ever could. Because they know what it’s like to be a stranger in your own land, among people who think they understand you but could never see what you’ve really seen, to feel the touch of magic and freedom and _change_ and then have it torn away just as suddenly.

They know what it is to step through a Door and not recognize the world on the other side. 

...Oh, have you forgotten the fifth? I wouldn’t blame you. It seems everyone has. 

He sits in the corner, away from the chaos, looking exactly as if he’d rather be anywhere else. There’s a book in his lap, and he keeps glancing to the others, squinting against the light, fruitlessly wishing for a moment of silence that will never come. 

~~Imagine that moment of silence. Except, it isn’t a moment, because it goes on and on and on and on and the silence is choking him and the dark is crushing him and ██████████ won’t let him go, refuses to let him go.~~

Later, the boy will close his book and leave the room. None of the others will notice.

This instant, frozen in time, is an aftermath and a prologue all at once. This is a disc that has finished playing its melodies, still spinning in its place even though there’s nothing left to be said, soon to be put away and forgotten about in the midst of spiders and dust. This is the overture to a symphony; the stage is set, the instruments are tuned, the conductor is raising her baton. 

Soon, a boy will stumble back through a doorway that should not be there from a world of gold and debts and dirty white and Fog, one boy where they should be two. Soon, the boy will see that the world around him is not where he’s meant to be, that he couldn’t find the space he used to occupy in it even if he tried. 

Soon, he will walk across that winding path and through that gate and those doors, up those stairs, to those five boys (and a sixth, who has been waiting to welcome him with open arms). The story won’t begin until he does.

Maybe it already has. 

Maybe it’s already ended. 

Time is a strange thing. Stories have a way of bending it, narration especially so. I could tell you that all of this has already happened. I could tell you that none of it has. In a way, both are true. In a way, neither of them are. 

You won’t truly know until the rest of it has started to unfold.

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked this, there's already one other work in this AU's collection by Lexis_Cheshire, and more are on the way, so keep an eye out! Thanks for reading!
> 
> (In case you're confused, the boys are mentioned in the order they appear in the tags: Cooper, Travis, Charlie, Ted, Noah, Schlatt.)


End file.
